


coils

by Fells



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Telepathic Bond, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 18:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5676922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fells/pseuds/Fells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many different uses for mortal flesh, some practical and some profane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	coils

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DragonofMordor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonofMordor/gifts).



> Wish I'd seen your stocking earlier! Then again, it's been a long time since I've felt the urge to make a mad dash for a close deadline. I MISSED THAT FEELING, haha. Hope it resulted in an enjoyable fic! Happy new year!

"I know you have suffered," Melkor says graciously, as though he can perceive the staggering grief provoked by his absence and all the vile industry that has been carried on in his name.Through years that yawn like black canyons, Angband has grown starless and jagged under Mairon's control, kin to the splintered mountains surrounding it, a masterpiece of despair and longing. To speak of suffering within those impenetrable walls is to praise the fortress and exalt its keeper; and Melkor does so indulgently, then bitterly, then with all the intimacy of experience. He describes his satisfaction with the pain he observes, there in the dark pinnacle of his realm, and he does not trouble to add: _I know it is that you cherish most. The full weight of anguish. You, who cannot sicken. Cannot fail me. Cannot rest._

Mairon submits to him as he has always done, unbidden. Loyal above all else, all others — and now far more shrewd. His physical form is exquisitely crafted to mirror every weapon that the low spawn of Eru might endeavor to raise against them. He is glory and goodness and golden devotion, carved in sweeping lines that share their secrets with the flickering mirth of fire.

And yet the most tiresome of his faults have kept pace with the splendor of his progress. Without subtlety he dares a certain closeness, his smooth fingers flexing cautiously, as though he yearns to press them against Melkor's wrist. When he is finally commanded to obscure himself in clawed rings, chain veils, and a dark mantle stitched with red and gold, he makes no complaint. It seems altogether impossible to dishearten him.

"My Lord," he says, when Melkor's patience with him finally grows dangerously thin. "My work here could not be called suffering. I merely waited." As he waits now, perhaps to see if Melkor will flatter him again. He will not. So, with a smile that flashes like knives, Mairon adds softly: "For this very day."

  
  


* * *

  
  


The strength of the black host relies upon one thing: a merciless hand to drive its torn edges deep into the heart of all resistance. When Melkor has need of warmongers, Mairon is behind every chain and hook and thorn raised in tribute to his power, veering through a thousand deadly forms, quick as fear and lean as death. Dread things follow him, drawn to his fury and the red resonance of flowing blood. Wolf-veiled and bristling, he leads them against the bearers of green crowns and deep roots, against their steel and their sunlight, and down into the hot flood of their dying screams. And when the slaughter is done he roams alone among the conquered, fangs flashing, paws swift, his belly filling to the gorge; harvester of all the dignity that the living may have hoped to find in death. And so Melkor is well pleased by his lieutenant, whose name becomes a sly sigil of destruction that gleams where no eye would think to look for victory.

Again and again Mairon is called to him in triumph and Melkor extends his appreciation like a jewel, held out in one ruined hand. At the gesture, Mairon will breathe deep, tasting the air like a serpent; or he will go to his knee, smiling with a delight he has no power or wish to conceal; or else he will reel back as though he has glimpsed within a globe of volcanic glass the last days of the world. But when pressed to name a reward, his answer never changes: _Nothing, nothing. Only this same service and your next command._

Made to sound simple, humble; such a small thing and so freely given — and it _is_ simple. Perhaps the rest should be met with suspicion in light of his wiles, but Mairon's fiendish eyes are guileless and pale when he steps under the long spur of Melkor's shadow. His secrets are written plainly in him then, clear as any map. And Melkor, already seeing where best to send him next, can never refuse the chance to brandish his most brutal and splendid weapon on the cracked, contested field of battle. It is his will, he often decides, that Mairon should go forth. It is _his_ will — though the words he must speak to execute it taste as if they have been placed in his mouth by slender fingers banded in iron.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Complacency is the trap that steals power from the jaws of the mighty. It does not please Melkor to admit the truth of that but has seen it in the way that civilizations fall before him, tearing apart at the last moment by forces born within their very walls. Thousands of cities, all alike in their collapse. The _same_ city, it seems to him sometimes, haunted by the same corpses of those too vain to remain vigilant. The same enchanted lights stoked and quenched by the same rivals. The same pain, he muses darkly as his scars ache and twist, in the same flesh.

He is seated on the broken black obelisk that serves as his throne when Mairon returns from the games of invasion that so please him. No game, this time, and little pleasure; his lovely face is streaked with gore and humiliation. Melkor does not need to ask him what he has done. News was borne back ahead of him by the flocks of black-winged messengers afflicting the sky between Utumno and Angband like an infection: he had been turned back from the revels of slaughter by a magnificent beast allied with obstinate Beleriand. Trailing pelt scraps and blood from closed wounds, Mairon slunk away to safety in the forbidding barrens beneath the northern mountain range — and now he comes to bleak Utumno. Melkor can imagine no more dire miscalculation if he expects sympathy or sanctuary from the first throne of darkness. Neither is natural in this place. Neither comes easily to the heart of one who has provoked ruin in the face of mercy.

There had been snarls and screams pulsing through the long tunnels that lead to the deep, open vault where Melkor resides in solitude and security, a violent chorus suggesting that captains and beasts had tried to impede Mairon's approach. Now there is dry silence as Mairon stalks into the chamber, half-mad, circling closer to the throne than decorum should allow. He drags jeweled nets from his tangled hair and casts them away, his eyes wild and rimmed in a crust of blood. He paces, chewing on breaths that shudder in his chest. He does not look toward the obelisk. Dispassionate, Melkor watches him struggle for an explanation that might allow him to escape the wrath that failure deserves.

"Defeated," Melkor declares at last. The word echoes back at him from a hundred deep hollows, hot as brimstone eyes blinking in the dark. "Yet you enter this hall alive and whole. Do you suppose that is worthy of commendation? Tell me, my most esteemed of all: what do you ask for recompense on this day?"

Mairon stops as though turned to stone. Remembers fear. Inch by inch he straightens, collects himself well enough to bow deeply and then stares at the scarred stone at Melkor's feet. He is being insolent, extending the obeisance to think. Melkor permits it, grimly invested in the moment, waiting to see how he will attempt to win back his pride.

"My Lord," Mairon murmurs at last, "forgive me, but I cannot say."

"You," Melkor echoes, deep as caverns of ice, "cannot say."

Mairon has the grace to hesitate. "I — that is, I do not know. I do not know my own thoughts." Then his eyes narrow to bloody daggers, gleaming above the barest crook of a smile. "Please. In your wisdom, you must tell me what it is I wish to ask of you."

Abruptly, Melkor rises. The leather, scale and shadow of his raiment hiss on black stone as he descends unsteadily to stand with his most loyal and brazen lieutenant. Admirable Mairon, who cannot fail him — yet does, in that moment, begin to tremble as Melkor looms before him. His tiny smile thins and he draws a breath, faint as a distant fall of ash in the night.

" _Wisdom_ ," Melkor mutters, disdainful, and reaches for him.

With ghastly tenderness, he lifts away the last melted string of gems clasped to Mairon's hair, brushes soot from his brow and grit from his lips. Then he steels himself, sharpens the intent of his thoughts and finally takes Mairon's head in his great hands. Passive now, Mairon gazes up at him, unresisting as cold fingers sink into the hot flesh at his nape and barbed, blackened thumbs press against his temples. The insight comes with the force of an ebony arrow punching bone. There is a shock, and their thoughts align. Mairon sighs; the breath seems to pass through both of them. And in that moment Melkor feels himself — that labyrinthine _self_ , in all its shared substance — suddenly burn. Not to ashes. Not as bone would wither and flake to dust in the iron core of dragon fire. Nor in any other way that would risk his mortal form. It is not precisely the same as dying, or agony. It is like nothing else.

"Ah," Melkor says, nearly overwhelmed by feelings of tolerance and mercy. "This."

Mairon closes his eyes. Still coiled in the silvery corridors of his spirit, Melkor perceives that shuttering of his senses. It is uncertain, he realizes, how fey and farseeing such a link between them could grow with the proper cultivation. He contemplates a myriad awareness, true omniscience, the ability to remain entrenched in the cleft catacombs of Utumno while his mind soars behind the keen eyes of his most loyal servant. He would send Mairon among the enemy as before: invisible to even the most suspicious eye, pursuing in secret all their fears and hopes and hidden wounds, the better to offer them great regency — if only they would submit to one greater power. He would see through Mairon the shining allure of the West, falling to cinders and cacophony. He would give Mairon all that he wants, knowing it as his own desire, feeling at last an end to the relentless pain of denial. He would have all of his ambitions realized as he envisions them now.

And Mairon, seeing shades of this in the darkness behind his eyes, smiles strangely. Touches Melkor's body, that perishable scaffold of an endless will, with wordless reverence. As if he expects this gesture to quiet the storm of incomprehensible violence battering their newly joined thoughts. As if he could by the press of his hands make that maimed flesh whole and perfect, a lasting monument engineered to please the malevolent spirit caged inside.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"You shall go from here," Melkor says against Mairon's skin. With the link sustained like a ghostly thread slowly drawing taut between them, the sensation is bewildering. "Yet you will not leave me."

"What is my first duty?" Mairon asks. He seems troubled to find that he is unable to draw the knowledge out for himself, that he is fettered and stifled while Melkor remains utterly supreme. "Where shall I go?"

"It matters not where. Only that you go."

Arrogance then, arched and sonorous, eclipsing the bright line of his allegiance. "I will go in your name, if you tell me why," Mairon insists.

So Melkor, by the faintest measure, relents. Shows him their futures entwined. Their two selves as one. And the surface of the world razed and reordered, its faults scorched away. Tells him: "If you wish."

Mairon goes forth to watch the end of an Age from obscurity, to tilt scales and whisper to waiting listeners in the dark. He goes, as vengeance, in a form without flesh, the grace of his master's needs discarded. He goes as though it was by his own will, toward the eastern shore.


End file.
